If Women Don’t Apply to Your Company, This Is Probably Why

WRITTEN BY LORI MACKENZIE, ALISON WYNN, AND SHELLEY CORRELL

“I’d love to hire more women, but when I post a job, they don’t apply. They’re not interested.”

“There just aren’t enough qualified women to do the job.”

At the Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Lab, where we work with leading companies to help them attract, retain, and advance a diverse pool of talent, we hear comments like these quite a bit. And every time we are reminded of the art of fishing: If you don’t catch a fish, you don’t blame the fish. You change your technique.

It’s time for leaders to stop blaming their companies’ lack of diversity on the lack of women applicants. They need to focus on why they’re not seeing more women applicants. They need to ask, “Why is my organization not attractive to women?”

Research from our Lab suggests that the answer might lie in the signals your company sends about its culture during the recruiting process.

Read more at hbr.org